Word: criterion
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Skill is the criterion, not brute power or force; points not knockdowns; clear hits not knockouts. Intercollegiate boxing de-emphasizes power and emphasizes skill...
Structural and dramatic skill alone have never made a successful epic, however. Effectiveness of expression is probably the most important single criterion. The written word has in this respect always been at a disadvantage when compared with the oral epic. Writers, unlike bards, can test neither the effectiveness of their subject matter nor its mode of expression, for they lack the opportunity to repeat, modify, and retest their work...
Tillich went on to say that pre-war Germans lost the criterion and the meaning of the church, and emphasized this as one of the main causes of the Fascist mania. "In America, we still have such criteria," said Tillich, "and this is why such potentially Fascist movements as McCarthy's can never succeed...
...decay and advancing doom. Says he: "The fountain of Arab chivalry has been fouled with oil; and the mouths of the preachers and the prophets have been stopped with gold . . . Where virtue reigned on a scale which some may have thought exaggerated, wealth has become the only criterion of merit . . . The common thief still forfeits his hand, the common adulterer his head, but the higher spheres of society, where speculation and vice are practiced on an impressive scale, live their lives in their own way with complete immunity from censure or sanctions. In a recent case, indeed, a respectable member...
Buckley agreed with Wechsler on this point, but said that quality, not quantity of readership, is the true criterion of an author's impact. "Drew Pearson certainly has more readers than Alfred North Whitehead ever had, but who will say Pearson has more effect on our society...